And though he cloaks himself in an aura of public service, he is actually just looking out for himself.
In many respects I often see him as a politician with a wet finger to the wind.
AND
HE IS NO FRIEND TO FREE SPEECH
For example we may view what his supression of campaign spending (McCain-Feingold) did to the constituent groups of your choice. In the end, it was just a way of slamming the door on their free speech. Sure it shut down a number of groups who I am not comfortable with, but I feel that in the end, this is a grave mistake. History will tell.
This new thing of McCain's is more of the same. Frankly, he just sounds like another sellout to the Christian moralist taliban. Great for him, to try to get their votes, but frankly just political pandering.
He is McCain
He does that sort of stuff.
Remember, he is out for nobody but himself.
Frankly I side with the EFF, even if most folks don't much like folks who have been branded for life as sexual predators or whatever term is popular for them, it is insane to do what McCain has proposed here:
essentially to cut off your nose to spite your face
In our modern (seeming) age, we have already given up so much to the cries of "We shall keep you safe" and yet all it gains us is less freedom at the behest and beneath the smothering hand of a burgeoning uber-state.
Sure it is over quoted, but Benjamin Franklin was relevant then and is spot on still: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
I will admit here and now that my gut instincts regarding McCain have been uncomfortable for years and years. I just don't trust the man, regardless that he may be a genuine 'hero'. Regardless that sometimes he may espouse something that resonates with me. My gut sense for the whole of the man, is that he is unbalanced and dangerous, and just hides it well enough to fool people.
I am going to add one more quote, this one from Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
Let's not be fooled by a man who wants us to think he is deeper than he really is.
First an admission that I am not in the advertising business so what do I know ?
Still, I should think that an advertisement that passes through the ether into the space between ones ears and then evaporates and is as forgetten aferwards as if it had never been shown at all, does not seem to me to be an effective ad.
Product recognition, Brand recognition ? Maybe if the ad is run so many times that it is bludgeoned into the memory with the primary virtue of becoming an annoyance. Maybe then. Otherwise, not likely.
So, what then ? How about an advertisment so creative, and with brand recognition so inextricably crafted into the entertainment that it literally BURNS its message into ones mind.
Well then. Since the SuperBowl, which advertisement have you been remarking about to your friends ? Discussing perhaps the cleverness of it ? And how it hit your funnybone with its abrupt end ? Which ad, has all the dialogue in catchy well delivered gibberish which you remember in impressions and find eloquent despite that it is just jabbering ? Which ad has such out of place and outlandish subtitling that the entire premise is utterly and undeniably ridiculous ? Which ad do you actually look forward to seeing, even though you have seen it before ?
At first thought, I suspect this is especially of interest at rural locations where power is not readily available. If locating power service in the U.K. is remotely like it is herein the USA, then the costs of getting power to a busy but electrically remote intersection can be brutal.
On the second note, as others have mentioned, this does constitute a tax upon the motorists who end up powering it. But, to be fair, it is the users of that intersection and that light signal who would be the beneficiaries of that specific tax too.
Well it is a movie, so I guess I can do what I had sort of decided not to do.
A friend had really wanted to see this. I was.... lukewarm.
When it was over, he thought it was pretty good... I felt it was.... oh well. It could have been worse. Really, it could have been.
I had heard it was based on a cartoon from MTV. But, the movie has to stand on its own right.
Before actors, before special effects, before anything comes story. And that does not just mean a neat McGuffin. It means a good story well told.
That in other words means: A Good Script.
It didn't have one.
The plot hook which is revealed after a while about folks being sterile, clones and needing to be able to reproduce naturally again versus folks more interested in the status quo than the future of humanity. That could be a good story.
But only with a top notch script.
The was perfunctoy story telling.
I can just visualize the backroom discussions: "Hey guys we'll have these sexy ladies in skin tight clothing performing superhuman feats and saving the world !"
"Yeah ! and, and and..... lots and lots and lots of special effects too !"
"Man this is gonna be so neat..... "
**********
Does anybody wonder why the scripts for films sometimes go through so many rewrites and often so many writers too ?
Because a good script, though awesome, is not by any means an easy thing to come by.
Just having investors with lots of money, does not a good film make. Nor will any amount of enthusiasm or good (or mediocre in this case) acting.
There just is no substitute for a good script.
If you have a good enough script, you can cut your expenses a TON on special effects and even get by just fine with so so actors.
Heck.
You can put it on a barren stage in front of an audience and simply let the story itself carry the full burden of everything.
But not with Aeon Flux.
And why is the title, not something of meaning. It surely sounds like it should mean something. Instead it is the name of the strangely clad heroine.
Whoever would have the insensitivity and chutzpah to name their baby girl Aeon Flux ?
Yep, I may have nailed it. The whole things starts out wrong on the VERY FIRST STEP. With its bonehead title...... And never stops stumbling, not even to the very end of the film.
Speaking only for myself, I found Aeon Flux to be a quite annoying film.
Frankly, considering who made it, I think AssHats..... er Jackass, was for its effort, a better film. And that is not saying very much.
Sometimes, and most especially when the client has a really lousy case and just desires to postpone the inevitable, their counsel, ends up with just one objective.
Delay, Delay, Delay.
The hope, that as each second of additional delay is expended, that some material miracle will somehow save the client from doom.
Or lacking that, at least extend the time before the headsman swings his axe.
And to that end, the lawyer expends all of his manipulative craft, intelligence and wiley deceits to fabricate smoke and mirrors from the invention of cleverly (or not) worded requests and motions.
There are few things in life, more amusing and at the same time equally heartbreaking, than to observe such presumably intelligent and educated folks going to such great lengths to shoot themselves in their collective feet.
And considering the rebuttals by some folks here, claiming to be authors, one only begins to hope such dimwittedness is not rampant.
Dear Lord. I had such respect for writers. Help me to regain it.
Folks, just RTFA.
Perhaps, perhaps, the lawsuit itself, is only to set and establish the rules under which the works will be made available. Else, mayhap authors and artists really do take vows of poverty to remain pure, and this is just designed to protect said purity.
I realize this may seem odd, but to many of us who are regulars here on slash dot, the 'social experience' is about as foreign as being an alien grey. But, it should not be forgotten that going to the movies is 'an event'. Far far cheaper than going to see a play or attend opera or a concert. Much more easy to schedule on the fly. And the world is full of folks who do not have the paragon of home entertainment systems.
Sure, we can stay home, watch the DVD and have pizza delivered. But it is not the same as seeing a film after a meal in a nice restaurant, with friends away from the house.
So, will some theaters fail and close ? Heck, theaters are always failing and closing. AND new ones are always opening up too. The business model will change. Some will live, some will die, and life will go on.
Meanwhile, the movie industry will short circuit the bootleg business. Why buy a bootleg of uncertain quality, when you can have the real thing now ? Maybe a plea of poverty. Fine, for those who cry poverty there will remain bootleg. For the rest of us, the official release.
When I started selling on ebay, I also liked the array of independant services that helped me with ebay.
Blackthorne Software had a great program that made setting up auctions fast and easy. The price was reasonable and the responsiveness of the people behind it was good.
Ebay bought out Blackthorne and relabled the product. The cost skyrocketted, with no net gain for users of the product.
Paypal was a great, independant and trustworthy provider of money transfer services without risking giving out your credit information to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Ebay bought out Paypal and now they are trying to nose into all sorts of places to cut their costs and lay all of their mess ups at the doors of their so called customers.
The bottom line for all companies the are allegedly providers of services to customers, is that when they switch from being service providers to dis-service providers, smart people DO become irritated and annoyed and begin to seek alternatives.
Companies do not have to be dis-service providers. But if those who run such companies to not have the personal ethics to remember this, then all they do is alienate customers and open the door for competitors to slash into their customer base and take it away.
The impression that I get is that his position; Minister of the Interior is a Police Position. Police, tend by their very nature, to not value the privacy of citizens. Still, I anticipate the intertia of the other powers of Germany to desire to honor the privacy concerns of the German Constitution as too precious to be destroyed at the whim of a policeman. I guess time and events will reveal all to us.
In either regard, citizens shall need to be vigilant in the defense of their personal rights and privacy. Demagogues, regardless of their titles or suits, will eagerly absorb these rights if there is no resistance.
The problem here however, is that the massive statutory accumulation of 'evidence' before any crime is committed in a very real psychological sense assumes guilt beforehand.
This changes the way law enforcement thinks and comes to assumptions about their right to have information at ALL times.
It is not too many steps before this begins to be much more like Napoleonic Law, which assumes guilt before innocence.
Beware.
The nose of the camel is well inside of the tent already.
The perspective from which we tend to view this is from 'outside' of Germany. American privacy laws actually stink. The government really is wanting to have ISPs keep more and more information.
In Germany, the protection of personal privacy is wildly different from the USA. There, privacy is considered very precious and jealously guarded.
Don't expect that to change anytime soon in Germany.
So I see this great new service from Google and decide to check it out.
Being a creature of habit, I zoom in on a place known as Calico Ghost Town Regional Park. I am able to zoom in much closer than with other programs that I have used. This is great.
Then I notice something. Running North out of Calico, it shows a road heading off into the Calico Mountains. Right up Wall Street Canyon. Heading right on up and paying no never no mind to the 200 foot tall dead vertical waterfall that is in the head of the canyon.
I have been on the ground there and know for an irrefutable fact that there is no road up that canyon, and that there never will be for there is no need or reason for such.
So now I am wondering. What is the resource that Google has used for their map database ? And just how many such errors does it contain ?
Their CD's are still arriving in your mail at an almost constant rate in various clever little packages.
As others are stating, DSL has become competetive or more than competetive. I have even heard advertisements for DSL from reputable companies for UNDER TWENTY DOLLARS.
Frankly this is also a threat to Earthlink.
If AOL fails to find a way to compete, then the churn and attrition in their customer base, will overwhelm their ability to compensate with their free hours and blizzard of CDROMs.
The original requirement for a patent model allowed for a maximum volume of one cubic foot, measured on all faces as the limit in model size. I am sure that originally, that seemed reasonable enough. Still, it became quite evident as the Patent Office was busy turning into a massive filing system of 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 inch models that this was a nightmare in progress, reminiscent of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc wherein an item is carted off into an endless warehouse. The models themselves vary from small individual components to astonishing miniaturized versions of large machinery to full size examples of individual products. The materials vary from wood, to machined metals to amazing works done in tin. Around 1890, the cubic foot rule had become unworkable and the models were no longer accepted. After allowing the Smithsonian to pick and choose from among the models, the remainder were scrapped. From among these, a small fraction have survived and reside in museums and collections. Some of these are sufficiently interesting as to serve as the centerpieces of collections. While the models themselves may be more of museum pieces, than educational, which could be debated either way, the documentation of the evolution of patents and how they build one each upon the others that have cut the path before them is of historical and technical interest.
Likely it will come even if folks don't want it.
on
Privacy in the Woods?
·
· Score: 1
That same tag you give to your pets, and that Wal Mart wanted embedded in all its merchandise ?
Sooner or later, someome will decide that you have no choice in the matter. You will have yours I will have mine and huge servers will just accumulate files of who, what, when, where. Makes record keeping too easy, tracking routine.
And guess what ? You will rarely have clue how often you are tracked. It will just happen. And only when someone really really wants to reach out and touch you, will you discover how unpleasant the whole concept is.
In North America, ringing is at 90 Volts at a frequency of 30 Hertz. Now depending on just how much of that gets through the laptop to the user, it can actually pack quite a wallop. Further, when the phone company is drying out lines, the voltages are much higher. Technically, such voltages should never arrive inside your house, but last time I checked, this work was done by folks with feet of clay.........
Among the many old computers tucked away in my garage are a few of the Osborne Ones that I got plenty of mileage out of in their time. The portability of this suitcase sized computer allowed me to do in the field what I nowadays use a laptop for. Heck, I was using it to program specialty equipment. Those machines don't owe me anything.
And I remember Adam Osborne. He was a lot of fun to be around. After the computer company went under, he got involved in computer books. Osborne/McGraw Hill if I recall correctly.
He shall be missed.
Re:I Cancelled My Earthlink Account
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 1
How come when I type into Google: terminate service earthlink: I get this: http://www.earthlink.net/about/policies/dia l/ Which includes instructions for terminating service by phone or mail ? Even on dial up at 48K it only took a minute to find.
Is this the same company that paid James McKenna aka James McParlan to operate as a "mole" and agent provocateur among Irish Miners so that members of an activist group could be imprisoned or hung. Men whose posthumous pardons have done them little good ? Is this the same company that sent Charly Siringo into the Couer de Alenes to "mole" among the enemies of big industry there and act there also as an Agent Provocateur in the labor troubles ? Is this the same company that conspired with a Governor of Colorado to bypass the laws of due process or extradition, and kidnap three labor leaders from that State and into Idaho to put them on trial for their lives ? An attempt this company fortunately lost due to the dedication and skill of Clarence Darrow. Is this comapnay so anxious to reclaim a specious past ? Does anybody in this company have any idea what the U.S. Constitution is really all about ? IT AIN'T ABOUT BUILDING A BIGGER BETTER POLICE STATE. NOR IS IT ABOUT "THOUGHT POLICE". Have any of them even heard of the Federalist or Anti-Federalist Papers ? Aside from opportunistic CORPORATE GRANDSTANDING, do these people believe in anything of depth ? GEORGE ORWELL'S NIGHTMARE STILL LIVES
Slashdot Mirror
McCain has long been an apparent Maverick.
He has a mercurial temper.
And though he cloaks himself in an aura of public service, he is actually just looking out for himself.
In many respects I often see him as a politician with a wet finger to the wind.
AND
HE IS NO FRIEND TO FREE SPEECH
For example we may view what his supression of campaign spending (McCain-Feingold) did to the constituent groups of your choice. In the end, it was just a way of slamming the door on their free speech. Sure it shut down a number of groups who I am not comfortable with, but I feel that in the end, this is a grave mistake. History will tell.
This new thing of McCain's is more of the same. Frankly, he just sounds like another sellout to the Christian moralist taliban. Great for him, to try to get their votes, but frankly just political pandering.
He is McCain
He does that sort of stuff.
Remember, he is out for nobody but himself.
Frankly I side with the EFF, even if most folks don't much like folks who have been branded for life as sexual predators or whatever term is popular for them, it is insane to do what McCain has proposed here:
essentially to cut off your nose to spite your face
In our modern (seeming) age, we have already given up so much to the cries of "We shall keep you safe" and yet all it gains us is less freedom at the behest and beneath the smothering hand of a burgeoning uber-state.
Sure it is over quoted, but Benjamin Franklin was relevant then and is spot on still: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
I will admit here and now that my gut instincts regarding McCain have been uncomfortable for years and years. I just don't trust the man, regardless that he may be a genuine 'hero'. Regardless that sometimes he may espouse something that resonates with me. My gut sense for the whole of the man, is that he is unbalanced and dangerous, and just hides it well enough to fool people.
I am going to add one more quote, this one from Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
Let's not be fooled by a man who wants us to think he is deeper than he really is.
McCain is not deep waters. Not at all.
Nuff said.
Doesn't everyone use a shredder now ?
Preferably a crosscut shredder ? You know, the type that turns documents into confetti ?
And if one is really paranoid, have the teensy results drop into a bucket of bleach water ?
Heh, I won't get modded much for this 'me too' post but,
Ran a few searches which give me great results on Google.
The text search mostly bombed.
The image search barely found the subject.
This round, Google wins. Maybe later MS Search will be better, but frankly, this badly NEEDS its 'beta' descriptor.
Nuff said.
First an admission that I am not in the advertising business so what do I know ?
Still, I should think that an advertisement that passes through the ether into the space between ones ears and then evaporates and is as forgetten aferwards as if it had never been shown at all, does not seem to me to be an effective ad.
Product recognition, Brand recognition ? Maybe if the ad is run so many times that it is bludgeoned into the memory with the primary virtue of becoming an annoyance. Maybe then. Otherwise, not likely.
So, what then ? How about an advertisment so creative, and with brand recognition so inextricably crafted into the entertainment that it literally BURNS its message into ones mind.
Well then. Since the SuperBowl, which advertisement have you been remarking about to your friends ? Discussing perhaps the cleverness of it ? And how it hit your funnybone with its abrupt end ? Which ad, has all the dialogue in catchy well delivered gibberish which you remember in impressions and find eloquent despite that it is just jabbering ? Which ad has such out of place and outlandish subtitling that the entire premise is utterly and undeniably ridiculous ? Which ad do you actually look forward to seeing, even though you have seen it before ?
Which One ?
That one is the Winner, hands down.
Just remember, that Libertarian is the modern word which is used now to replace the old one with all of its heavy negative baggage.
What is that old word ?
Anarchist.
At first thought, I suspect this is especially of interest at rural locations where power is not readily available. If locating power service in the U.K. is remotely like it is herein the USA, then the costs of getting power to a busy but electrically remote intersection can be brutal.
On the second note, as others have mentioned, this does constitute a tax upon the motorists who end up powering it. But, to be fair, it is the users of that intersection and that light signal who would be the beneficiaries of that specific tax too.
snerk ....
.... lukewarm.
... I felt it was .... oh well. It could have been worse. Really, it could have been.
..... lots and lots and lots of special effects too !"
..... "
...... And never stops stumbling, not even to the very end of the film.
.... er Jackass, was for its effort, a better film. And that is not saying very much.
Well it is a movie, so I guess I can do what I had sort of decided not to do.
A friend had really wanted to see this. I was
When it was over, he thought it was pretty good
I had heard it was based on a cartoon from MTV. But, the movie has to stand on its own right.
Before actors, before special effects, before anything comes story. And that does not just mean a neat McGuffin. It means a good story well told.
That in other words means: A Good Script.
It didn't have one.
The plot hook which is revealed after a while about folks being sterile, clones and needing to be able to reproduce naturally again versus folks more interested in the status quo than the future of humanity. That could be a good story.
But only with a top notch script.
The was perfunctoy story telling.
I can just visualize the backroom discussions: "Hey guys we'll have these sexy ladies in skin tight clothing performing superhuman feats and saving the world !"
"Yeah ! and, and and
"Man this is gonna be so neat
**********
Does anybody wonder why the scripts for films sometimes go through so many rewrites and often so many writers too ?
Because a good script, though awesome, is not by any means an easy thing to come by.
Just having investors with lots of money, does not a good film make. Nor will any amount of enthusiasm or good (or mediocre in this case) acting.
There just is no substitute for a good script.
If you have a good enough script, you can cut your expenses a TON on special effects and even get by just fine with so so actors.
Heck.
You can put it on a barren stage in front of an audience and simply let the story itself carry the full burden of everything.
But not with Aeon Flux.
And why is the title, not something of meaning. It surely sounds like it should mean something. Instead it is the name of the strangely clad heroine.
Whoever would have the insensitivity and chutzpah to name their baby girl Aeon Flux ?
Yep, I may have nailed it. The whole things starts out wrong on the VERY FIRST STEP. With its bonehead title
Speaking only for myself, I found Aeon Flux to be a quite annoying film.
Frankly, considering who made it, I think AssHats.
Sometimes, and most especially when the client has a really lousy case and just desires to postpone the inevitable, their counsel, ends up with just one objective.
Delay, Delay, Delay.
The hope, that as each second of additional delay is expended, that some material miracle will somehow save the client from doom.
Or lacking that, at least extend the time before the headsman swings his axe.
And to that end, the lawyer expends all of his manipulative craft, intelligence and wiley deceits to fabricate smoke and mirrors from the invention of cleverly (or not) worded requests and motions.
There are few things in life, more amusing and at the same time equally heartbreaking, than to observe such presumably intelligent and educated folks going to such great lengths to shoot themselves in their collective feet.
.....
And considering the rebuttals by some folks here, claiming to be authors, one only begins to hope such dimwittedness is not rampant.
Dear Lord. I had such respect for writers. Help me to regain it.
Folks, just RTFA.
Perhaps, perhaps, the lawsuit itself, is only to set and establish the rules under which the works will be made available. Else, mayhap authors and artists really do take vows of poverty to remain pure, and this is just designed to protect said purity.
Heaven protect us from such
I realize this may seem odd, but to many of us who are regulars here on slash dot, the 'social experience' is about as foreign as being an alien grey. But, it should not be forgotten that going to the movies is 'an event'. Far far cheaper than going to see a play or attend opera or a concert. Much more easy to schedule on the fly. And the world is full of folks who do not have the paragon of home entertainment systems.
Sure, we can stay home, watch the DVD and have pizza delivered. But it is not the same as seeing a film after a meal in a nice restaurant, with friends away from the house.
So, will some theaters fail and close ? Heck, theaters are always failing and closing. AND new ones are always opening up too. The business model will change. Some will live, some will die, and life will go on.
Meanwhile, the movie industry will short circuit the bootleg business. Why buy a bootleg of uncertain quality, when you can have the real thing now ? Maybe a plea of poverty. Fine, for those who cry poverty there will remain bootleg. For the rest of us, the official release.
YAY !
When I started selling on ebay, I also liked the array of independant services that helped me with ebay.
Blackthorne Software had a great program that made setting up auctions fast and easy. The price was reasonable and the responsiveness of the people behind it was good.
Ebay bought out Blackthorne and relabled the product. The cost skyrocketted, with no net gain for users of the product.
Paypal was a great, independant and trustworthy provider of money transfer services without risking giving out your credit information to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Ebay bought out Paypal and now they are trying to nose into all sorts of places to cut their costs and lay all of their mess ups at the doors of their so called customers.
The bottom line for all companies the are allegedly providers of services to customers, is that when they switch from being service providers to dis-service providers, smart people DO become irritated and annoyed and begin to seek alternatives.
Companies do not have to be dis-service providers. But if those who run such companies to not have the personal ethics to remember this, then all they do is alienate customers and open the door for competitors to slash into their customer base and take it away.
Actually you are not alone.
.....
After hearing so much hype, I also purchased the DVD set. Watched a few of discs and quite frankly found it
(( don't say it )) BORING (( / don't say it ))
I have not even watched all them. Just lost interest.
Now Deadwood, there is a series where I could not stop watching. I shall definitely be picking up the season 2 set on DVD when it comes out.
The impression that I get is that his position; Minister of the Interior is a Police Position. Police, tend by their very nature, to not value the privacy of citizens. Still, I anticipate the intertia of the other powers of Germany to desire to honor the privacy concerns of the German Constitution as too precious to be destroyed at the whim of a policeman. I guess time and events will reveal all to us.
In either regard, citizens shall need to be vigilant in the defense of their personal rights and privacy. Demagogues, regardless of their titles or suits, will eagerly absorb these rights if there is no resistance.
The problem here however, is that the massive statutory accumulation of 'evidence' before any crime is committed in a very real psychological sense assumes guilt beforehand.
This changes the way law enforcement thinks and comes to assumptions about their right to have information at ALL times.
It is not too many steps before this begins to be much more like Napoleonic Law, which assumes guilt before innocence.
Beware.
The nose of the camel is well inside of the tent already.
The perspective from which we tend to view this is from 'outside' of Germany. American privacy laws actually stink. The government really is wanting to have ISPs keep more and more information.
In Germany, the protection of personal privacy is wildly different from the USA. There, privacy is considered very precious and jealously guarded.
Don't expect that to change anytime soon in Germany.
Its sort of funny.
I have gotten to the point that rather than read Dvorak's actual rants.
I just read some of the responses here instead and then move along.
So I see this great new service from Google and decide to check it out.
6 6057&spn=0.020020%2C0.019419
Being a creature of habit, I zoom in on a place known as Calico Ghost Town Regional Park. I am able to zoom in much closer than with other programs that I have used. This is great.
Then I notice something. Running North out of Calico, it shows a road heading off into the Calico Mountains. Right up Wall Street Canyon. Heading right on up and paying no never no mind to the 200 foot tall dead vertical waterfall that is in the head of the canyon.
Take a look
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.946838%2C-116.8
I have been on the ground there and know for an irrefutable fact that there is no road up that canyon, and that there never will be for there is no need or reason for such.
So now I am wondering. What is the resource that Google has used for their map database ? And just how many such errors does it contain ?
Look at the situation:
AOL's customer base is shrinking now.
Their CD's are still arriving in your mail at an almost constant rate in various clever little packages.
As others are stating, DSL has become competetive or more than competetive. I have even heard advertisements for DSL from reputable companies for UNDER TWENTY DOLLARS.
Frankly this is also a threat to Earthlink.
If AOL fails to find a way to compete, then the churn and attrition in their customer base, will overwhelm their ability to compensate with their free hours and blizzard of CDROMs.
The original requirement for a patent model allowed for a maximum volume of one cubic foot, measured on all faces as the limit in model size. I am sure that originally, that seemed reasonable enough. Still, it became quite evident as the Patent Office was busy turning into a massive filing system of 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 inch models that this was a nightmare in progress, reminiscent of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc wherein an item is carted off into an endless warehouse. The models themselves vary from small individual components to astonishing miniaturized versions of large machinery to full size examples of individual products. The materials vary from wood, to machined metals to amazing works done in tin. Around 1890, the cubic foot rule had become unworkable and the models were no longer accepted. After allowing the Smithsonian to pick and choose from among the models, the remainder were scrapped. From among these, a small fraction have survived and reside in museums and collections. Some of these are sufficiently interesting as to serve as the centerpieces of collections. While the models themselves may be more of museum pieces, than educational, which could be debated either way, the documentation of the evolution of patents and how they build one each upon the others that have cut the path before them is of historical and technical interest.
That same tag you give to your pets, and that Wal Mart wanted embedded in all its merchandise ?
Sooner or later, someome will decide that you have no choice in the matter. You will have yours I will have mine and huge servers will just accumulate files of who, what, when, where. Makes record keeping too easy, tracking routine.
And guess what ? You will rarely have clue how often you are tracked. It will just happen. And only when someone really really wants to reach out and touch you, will you discover how unpleasant the whole concept is.
Just when DV, has been busy graduating to HDTV and about when SHDTV is getting started, rendering megamachines shall be hitting the road.
Imagine the juice such machines will have.
One box renderfarms.
In North America, ringing is at 90 Volts at a frequency of 30 Hertz. Now depending on just how much of that gets through the laptop to the user, it can actually pack quite a wallop. Further, when the phone company is drying out lines, the voltages are much higher. Technically, such voltages should never arrive inside your house, but last time I checked, this work was done by folks with feet of clay.........
Among the many old computers tucked away in my garage are a few of the Osborne Ones that I got plenty of mileage out of in their time. The portability of this suitcase sized computer allowed me to do in the field what I nowadays use a laptop for. Heck, I was using it to program specialty equipment. Those machines don't owe me anything.
And I remember Adam Osborne. He was a lot of fun to be around. After the computer company went under, he got involved in computer books. Osborne/McGraw Hill if I recall correctly.
He shall be missed.
How come when I type into Google: terminate service earthlink:a l/
I get this:
http://www.earthlink.net/about/policies/di
Which includes instructions for terminating service by phone or mail ?
Even on dial up at 48K it only took a minute to find.
Is this the same company that paid James McKenna aka James McParlan to operate as a "mole" and agent provocateur among Irish Miners so that members of an activist group could be imprisoned or hung. Men whose posthumous pardons have done them little good ? Is this the same company that sent Charly Siringo into the Couer de Alenes to "mole" among the enemies of big industry there and act there also as an Agent Provocateur in the labor troubles ? Is this the same company that conspired with a Governor of Colorado to bypass the laws of due process or extradition, and kidnap three labor leaders from that State and into Idaho to put them on trial for their lives ? An attempt this company fortunately lost due to the dedication and skill of Clarence Darrow. Is this comapnay so anxious to reclaim a specious past ? Does anybody in this company have any idea what the U.S. Constitution is really all about ? IT AIN'T ABOUT BUILDING A BIGGER BETTER POLICE STATE. NOR IS IT ABOUT "THOUGHT POLICE". Have any of them even heard of the Federalist or Anti-Federalist Papers ? Aside from opportunistic CORPORATE GRANDSTANDING, do these people believe in anything of depth ? GEORGE ORWELL'S NIGHTMARE STILL LIVES